Mixed Race Studies

Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population

Multi-Racial/Ethnic Counseling Concerns (MRECC) Interest Network of the American Counseling Association Taskforce
American Counseling Association
2015-02-02
51 pages

Co-Chairs/Authors:

Kelley R. Kenney

Mark E. Kenney

Taskforce Members/Authors:

Susan B. Alvarado

Amanda L. Baden

Leah Brew

Stuart Chen-Hayes

Cheryl L. Crippen,

Hank L. Harris

Richard C. Henriksen, Jr.

Krista M. Malott

Derrick A. Paladino

Mark L. Pope

Carmen F. Salazar

Anneliese A. Singh

In memory of Dr. Bea Wehrly for her tireless work and advocacy. The publication of her book, Counseling Interracial Individuals and Families, by the American Counseling Association in 1996 was a major part of this journey.

Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population: Couples, Families, and Individuals; and Transracial Adoptees and Families (Endorsed and adopted by the ACA Governing Council, March 2015)

The Multiracial/Ethnic Counseling Concerns (MRECC) Interest Network of the American Counseling Association has developed the following competencies in order to promote the development of sound professional counseling practices to competently and effectively attend to the diverse needs of the multiple heritage population.

Section I: Overview

This document is intended to provide counseling competencies for working with and advocating for members of the multiracial population including interracial couples, multiracial families, and multiracial individuals, and transracial adoptees and families. The document is intended for use by counselors and other helping professionals; individuals who educate, train, and/or supervise current and future counseling and other helping professionals; as well as individuals who may conduct research and/or other professional activities with members of the multiracial population. To this end, the goal is for these competencies to serve as a resource and provide a framework for how counseling and other helping professionals can competently and effectively work with and advocate for members of the multiracial population…

Read the entire report here.

The Color Conversation-Healthy Identity Happy Kids: Fostering Positive Racial Identity in Mixed Youth

Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
World City Center
3911 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90018
Saturday, 2015-06-20, 13:00-16:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join our 3rd parenting seminar where we focus on issues relating to adolescence – specifically, racial identity.

Hear a presentation on how parents can better understand the racial identity process in youth and what you can do to support your youth! Join a supportive conversation in a safe space with similar parents and families.

Bring your mixed race or transracially adopted TEEN for a special breakout session JUST for them!

FREE childcare will be provided at the preschool playground and garden for younger children.

Children will engage in an identity building and affirming art project presented by Art Zone!

This event will be beneficial for ALL parents, not just those with teens!…

For more information, click here.

‘Typical American Families’ photo exhibit to be unveiled at Emory

Emory News Center
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
2015-05-04

Kimber Williams

“Typical American Families” highlights the many configurations that family life can take in America. Photos in the exhibit will be unveiled at a public reception at the Center for Ethics on May 7. Photo by Ross Oscar Knight.

“Typical American Families,” a new photographic exhibit that explores a wider view of American families, will be unveiled Thursday, May 7, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Emory Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive.

Conceived by Carlton Mackey, director of Emory’s Ethics and the Arts Program, the exhibit offers a photographic glimpse into the lives of 15 Atlanta-area families, celebrating “the vast landscape of manifestations of family” across spectrums of culture, faith and ability, Mackey says.

The event includes a public reception and formal unveiling of the exhibit. Guests will also have a chance to meet families that participated in the community project, which showcases the diversity of the American family through the lens of international photographer/photoculturalist Ross Oscar Knight, Mackey’s creative partner.

The families — who haven’t yet seen their photographs — will share stories and insights into how they bridge faith, culture and difference in Atlanta, Mackey says…

…”Typical American Families” was inspired by Mackey’s ongoing work on “Beautiful in Every Shade,” an empowerment campaign that celebrates the breadth and depth of beauty in every human being.

That campaign grew out of  “50 Shades of Black,” a multi-media art project launched by Mackey in 2013 — and funded in part by a grant from Emory’s Center for Creativity & Arts — that explores the intersection of skin tone and sexuality in the shaping of identity through images and personal narrative…

Read the entire article here.

Welcome to Seattle Public Schools. What race are you?

The Seattle Globalist
Seattle, Washington
2015-05-05

Sharon H. Chang

“Welcome to Seattle Public Schools!” it reads happily. I’m cheerfully advised to use a checklist following to help me enroll my child in kindergarten.

Okay, I think. No problem. My eyes scroll down the checklist: Admission Form, Certificate of Immunization Status, Special Education Form, and School Choice Form. Got it.

I start filling in the Admission Form. It doesn’t take long to get to page 3, “Student Ethnicity and Race”:

“INSTRUCTIONS: This form is to be filled out by the student’s parents or guardians, and both questions must be answered. Part A asks about the student’s ethnicity and Part B asks about the student’s race.”

I heave a huge inward sigh and put the paper aside for the day. Maybe I’ll come back to that one tomorrow, I reflect. But I don’t. I don’t come back to it for at least a week. Actually probably more like two weeks.

This is part of the process of enrolling your child in Seattle Public Schools (SPS). You have to state your child’s race and ethnicity. It’s not optional. And there is an entire one-page form dedicated to that declaration, which in my mind shows the clear significance of labeling a child’s so-called race and ethnicity to the district.

Given that my partner and I are both mixed-race identifying and have endured a lifetime of checking boxes that (hold your breath) might or might not fit, I find these types of forms exhausting. One, they never fit anyone and everyone just right. Two, they are generally and perpetually confusing. Three, they are almost always deeply racializing — they make us feel our bodies are “raced” whether we want to or not. And four, they are pretty suspect in their intentions.

Read the entire article here.

Negotiating Mixed Ethnicity/Heritage Relationships Seminar

Coventry University
Centre for Communities & Social Justice
Room 152, Jaguar Building
Coventry, United Kingdom
Wednesday, 2015-06-24, 09:45-15:15 BST (Local Time)

Historically, debates about ‘mixed race’ families have centred on Black/White relations concerning issues of identity, belonging and racism affecting the partner and their children. Though these issues have not gone away, we are also seeing an emergence of new configurations and challenges of family diversity involving inter-faith, inter-caste and inter-ethnic relationships.

This workshop seeks to provide a forum to debate and share experiences. Anyone interested from an academic, personal or professional perspective in these emerging forms of family and social diversity are welcome to participate.

Keynote Speakers

• Dr Omar Khan – Director Runnymede; Member of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, UK representative on the European Commission’s Socio-economic network of experts.
• Audrey Allas – PhD Student, University of Durham; research interests are in interfaith relations, particularly between Abrahamic traditions, intermarriages involving British Pakistani Muslim communities.

For more information, click here.

Three Unmissable Books That Can Help Us Honor Our Past

Pacific Citizen: The National Newspaper of the JACL
2015-04-30

Ryan Kenji Kuramitsu, JACL MDC Youth Representative

‘It was books,” wrote social critic James Baldwin, “that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

As Japanese Americans, our history and experiences offer far greater lessons than simple condemnations of the racism, war hysteria and failure of political leadership that led to our mass incarceration. Rather than trapping us in ancient history, our community’s unique moral perspective can advantage us to speak into a number of modern social struggles, connecting us with all people who are alive.

In this vein, here are three unmissable books that can help us honor our past as we continue to draw fresh connections to present challenges…

…3.  “Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World” — In her debut work, sociologist and critical mixed-race theorist Sharon H. Chang brings years of research and writing experience to the project of aiding multiracial Asian American families navigate critical conversations on multiracial identity. Chang’s holistic and intersectional work delves into intensive interviews with 68 parents of mixed-race children, providing readers with invaluable insight and practical observations on the labor of raising multiracial Asian children in a “post-racial” society forever fixated on a black-white racial binary…

Read the entire retive here.

Having Mixed-Race Kids Doesn’t Make You Non-White

Mom.Me
2015-04-20

Grace Hwang Lynch, Blogger
Hapa Mama

Adel Vardell photography

Do white parents become “less white” when they have non-white kids? That question is burning up my Facebook feed right now, thanks to an essay in the New York Times last week.

In the piece published in Motherlode, Jack Cheng (a Chinese American man married to a white woman) writes of his wife:

“She became less white when our son, and then our daughter, were born. I think the first bit of doubt surfaced the day we were on the subway with our newborn and a woman came up to my wife and said: ‘Oh, he’s so cute! When did you adopt him?’ I was livid: Did it not occur to this woman that the father was sitting right next to his wife and child?”

But that is not becoming less white…

…While I might be able to code switch and move in different circles and enjoy a variety of cultures, that doesn’t change the fact that my skin is golden, my nose is wide and sometimes people assume I’m a Tiger Mother. Or the manicurist. Or that I should be taking their General’s Chicken order…

Read the entire article here.

White Parents, Becoming a Little Less White

Motherlode: Living the Family Dynamic
The New York Times
2015-04-15

Jack Cheng

Amy Crosson

Former Gov. Jeb Bush made news recently because he checked “Hispanic” on a voter registration form. This is obviously ridiculous from a scion of the Bush family (and Mr. Bush has said he made a mistake). Yet, I understand, because the family he raised is not unlike mine.

A few years ago, in fact, my wife casually mentioned that she doesn’t consider herself 100 percent white any more. She has blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin, and as far back as anyone can remember, all of her ancestors have been Irish.

She was white when we were married. I know that because I’m Chinese and that made us an interracial couple. My wife jokes (I think she’s joking) that she married me in part because my increased melanin would protect her children from skin cancer.

She became less white when our son, and then our daughter, were born. I think the first bit of doubt surfaced the day we were on the subway with our newborn and a woman came up to my wife and said: “Oh, he’s so cute! When did you adopt him?” I was livid: Did it not occur to this woman that the father was sitting right next to his wife and child? It turned out that the woman really just wanted to talk about her own adopted granddaughter but somewhere in that moment my wife was identified as the mother of a nonwhite child…

…While it will take 18 years for that mixed race baby to vote, there is a parent in that family who suddenly has an altered perspective on the culture and policies of the United States. White mothers who realize that their sons will be victims of racial profiling, white fathers who suddenly feel a little squeamish about the fact that “Asian” is a category of pornography. There are white parents whose children look vaguely Middle Eastern and will face harder times getting onto airplanes…

Read the entire article here.

Does the “White Privilege” Umbrella cover Black and Biracial Children? (Survey included)

Lisa W. Rosenberg: Writings on Body Image and Identity
2015-04-03

Lisa W. Rosenberg

This is the first post I have written soliciting responses to a survey—so I’m stating it up front: At the end of this post is an actual, honest-to-goodness survey for those who are interested and who fit the demographics* I’m looking for.

So, what is this about “White Privilege?” Sounds kind of political, kind of threatening, no?

The first time I heard the term “White Privilege,” I was in my late twenties and teaching at a very exclusive, private girls’ school on the Upper East Side of New York. Peggy McIntosh, PhD., the feminist, antiracism activist and associate director of the Wellesley College Women’s Project, had been brought in by the Parents’ Diversity Awareness Committee of said school. McIntosh, who is white, was there to discuss her famous paper, White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Backpack, as part of a workshop for staff, parents and students about the ways in which whites unwittingly benefit from racism on a daily basis…

Read the entire article here.

I’m a White Mom With Biracial Children, and What I Do With Their Hair Is No One’s Business

The Root
2015-03-24

Maria Guido, Associate Editor
Mommyish

Being the mother of two biracial children, I’m noticing that both races feel a sense of community when offering boundary-invading, unsolicited hair-care advice.

Maybe I’m just not the type of parent who likes unsolicited advice or people getting in my personal space, but one of the things that I’ve noticed about parenting a mixed-race child is that the general public seems to have no boundaries.

When you become a mother, you notice that the boundaries people usually have when dealing with others start to chip away. It begins in pregnancy when you may start to hear an onslaught of unsolicited advice from strangers, about everything from your diet to the probable sex of the child you’re carrying. Not to mention the complete strangers who come up and put their hands on, around and under your pregnant belly.

Then you have the child, and you become used to the “how cute” comments. Not a big deal. It’s not uncommon for people to comment when they see what looks to be a “brand-new” baby in front of them.

I understand that all parents experience this kind of attention, and it’s not necessarily negative. But after your child begins to grow, that attention usually wanes. As a mother of mixed-race children, I have yet to experience this “waning.” Maybe people have no boundaries when it comes to kids in general, but in my experience, having mixed-race children turns it up a notch…

Read the entire article here.